Bag People

Bag people (in Russian мешочники, or "people with bags") is a term in Russian and other Slavic languages that refers to people from the cities who travel to the countryside to buy food for small scale trade or for personal consumption, often exchanging it for material goods from farmers due to collapse of the monetary system. Historically, the bag people have appeared in response to economic and political collapse that ended organized delivery and distribution of food in the cities. The phenomenon was very widespread during and soon after the Russian Revolution. It also flourished throughout Eastern Europe and Germany after the devastation of World War I. No well-known English language term for this phenomenon exists because English-speaking countries have not experienced crises that would have given rise to it. In literature, bag people are mentioned, for example, in Remarque's The Road Back and Karel Čapek's The Absolute at Large.

 

<< PreviousWord BrowserNext >>
symbolic speech
prior restraint
lmfbr
intercession
melbourne storm
shield laws
cam whore
act brumbies
the white disease
pogs
ezer weizman
artists' rifles
eco capitalist
tao yin
teamtnt
a grand don't come for free
so paulo metro
free look
it (mod format)
crosshair
james v. monaco
the absolute at large
zalman shazar
the spine
the devil's own
pete ross
the road back
u.s. highway 112
glad (disambiguation)
49ers
standesamt dziembowo
standesamt margonin
kichisaburo nomura
standesamt podanin
moenia
digital recording
san salvador island
nathaniel william taylor
james gordon (comics)
war with the newts
koss
santa cruz, bolivia
william b. davis
sengaku ji